Drinking, Smoking and Screwing: Great Writers on Good Times Review

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(More customer reviews)It's a puritanical society we live in, and it sucks. This book makes for a fine release from that straightjacket.
This fabulous short story collection is pure, unadulterated (perhaps adulterous?), almost-illegal fun. Bukowski's unabashedly macho "Women", Erica Jong's Zipless...(can I say the word in a public review?), Eve Babitz's revelations on something called "The Green Death" (I must find some one day and see if it really is that good); well, it's everything your mother and the Surgeon General told you not to do, but you do anyway. Or at least you should.
Speaking of the Surgeon General, my favorite here is Fran Lebowitz's "When Smoke Gets In Your Eyes...Shut Them" (page 192), and I quote from it quite often in today's smokist, nicotine gum, get the patch society. For air pollution and my blood pressure, one would do better outlawing those pretentious, gas guzzling Suburban Utility Vehicles. I suspect that many of the writers in this book BECAME writers to be able to smoke on the job in peace.
I would quibble with a few of the inclusions. For instance, I would have used Anne Sexton's "Fury Of The Cocks" instead if "When A Man Enters A Woman". I would have picked one of Dorthy Parkers acerbic poems about love and sex rather than using "You Were Perfectly Fine". I would have left out the "Lotlita" excerpt altogether for something more overtly satisfying and taboo, such as Pat Califia's "Calyx of Isis". And I'd never have even touched the vapid, sexist, nonsensical and needlessly trashy "Candy", by Southern and Hoffenberg, which is in this collection is rather like a pimple on the chest of an otherwise exquisitely beautiful stripper.
However, the good "bad" stuff more than makes up for the, well, bad "bad" stuff, and this is a book I go back to again and again. Call it my bedtime reading, if you will....a book that goes deliciously well with a good Dunhill cigarette, a nice shot of Baileys, and a half dressed...oh, nevermind. There are kids here.

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Paula Deen: It Ain't All About the Cookin' Review

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(More customer reviews)First of all, if you have a high opinion of Paula Deen and don't want to know about her past, including lots of mistakes (by her own admission) and her bouts of agoraphobia (which left her housebound) and panic attacks, then this isn't the book for you. But there is lots to recommend here - not only are there wonderful recipes at the end of each chapter, some of which have become family favorites for us - try the chili or the ham salad sandwiches or one of her scrumptous desserts - but Deen holds nothing back and proves that a person who started out with nothing, had a low opinion of herself but lots of energy and gumption, was able to rise above her flaws and make it. It is inspiring and an amazing story, too!
I loved this book and found it VERY inspiring. Deen came from a rather modest background and she didn't have a lot of self-esteem. She married a handsome hunk of a guy, had two gorgeous boys and found herself in a mess of trouble, with a man who couldn't make ends meet and leading a hardscrabble existence. She lost her parents and felt lost, alone and very scared. Her home was repossessed. A lot of people would have given up at that point but she did not. Working nearly round the clock, she slowly built up her business.....very slowly, but steadily. But out of her adversity, one step at a time, she learned to make it. Along the way, she made lots of mistakes but she kept persevering.
In all honesty, some readers may have trouble with some of values and decisions made by Deen but I didn't judge her a bit. We are all human and we all have our ups and downs. I find her indefatable resilience to be amazing.

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Do you know the real Paula Deen? You may think you know the butter-loving, finger-licking, joke-cracking queen of melt-in-your-mouth Southern cuisine. You may have even visited The Lady & Sons to taste for yourself the down-home delicacies that made her famous and even heard some version of her Cinderella story (a single mom with two teenage sons started a brown-bag lunch business with $200 and wound up with a thriving restaurant, a fairy-tale second marriage, and wildly popular television shows), but you have never heard the intimate details of her often bumpy road to fame and fortune. Courageously honest, downright inspiring, and just a little bit saucy, Paula shares the highs and lows of her life in the inimitable charming and irreverent style that you know from her television shows and personal appearances. She talks about long childhood summers spent in a bathing suit and roller skates and hard years living in the back of her father's gas station; a buzzing high school social life of sleepovers, parties, cheerleading, and boys; and a difficult marriage. The death of her beloved parents precipitated a debilitating agoraphobia that crippled her for years. But even when the going got tough, Paula never lost the good grace and sense of humor that would eventually help carry her to success and stardom. Of course, you can't get by on charm alone: as Paula has learned, you need plenty of willpower, hard work, and, above all, the love and support of family and friends to finance, sustain, and run a successful restaurant. In each chapter, Paula shares new recipes: there's serious comfort food like her momma's Chocolate-Dippy Doughnuts, Courage Chili for when you know life's going to get tough, Sexy Oxtails for seducing that special someone, and the recipe for her new mother-in-law's Banana Nut Delight Cake that Paula finally got just right. And you'll love the never-before-seen photos of her family. In this memoir, Paula Deen speaks as frankly and intimately as few women in the public eye have ever dared. Whether she's telling tales of good times or bad, her story is proof that the old-fashioned American dream is alive and kicking, and there still is such a thing as a real-life happy ending.

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